Intel's Ivy Bridge delayed, says senior executive

BARCELONA—A senior Intel Corp. executive has admitted that its next-generation Ivy Bridge microprocessor will be launched in June, some eight to 10 weeks later than previously expected.

Sean Maloney, executive vice-president of Intel and chairman of Intel China. told the Financial Times that the 22-nm processor would not be shipping in April as had widely been expected by analysts.

Intel had previously given an ambiguous "spring" launch estimate, with many believing the firm would ship the chips earlier rather than later, and some even predicting a mid-to-end March arrival.

"I think maybe it’s June now," said Maloney to the Financial Times. It’s unclear whether Maloney was referring to all Ivy Bridge chips or just certain SKUs.

This is the first time, however, that an Intel executive has gone on record to confirm that the successor to Sandy Bridge would be delayed, blaming the push back on the complexity of the new manufacturing process.

Intel spokespeople refused to comment on Maloney’s remarks and said that, officially, Intel’s guidance for shipping Ivy Bridge in the second quarter remained unchanged.

Jim McGregor of In-Stat told EE Times that, according to his industry sources in Taiwan, Intel's Ivy Bridge server parts were only delayed from April 8 until April 29, though the dual core i5 and i7 parts for notebooks had been pushed out from a planned May 13th launch to June 3.

Core i3 parts would launch as planned on June 24, said McGregor.

"It doesn’t really matter because there’s not really any compelling competition right now,” said one industry analyst on condition of anonymity, referring to AMD’s recent lag in the market.

"After a long string of successes, it seems like Intel has finally made a manufacturing misstep, with the 22-nm FinFETs. This suggests that advanced CMOS may get even more challenging in the future for foundries such as TSMC and Global Foundries," said David Kanter of Real World Technologies.

Jim McGregor of In-Stat told EE Times that according to his industry sources in Taiwan, Intel's Ivy Bridge server parts were only delayed from April 8 until April 29, though the dual core i5 and i7 parts for notebooks had been pushed out from a planned May 13th launch to June 3.
Core i3 parts would launch as planned on June 24, said McGregor.
That's three weeks - I am not sure a manufacturing glitch would fixable in 3 weeks considering cycletime is probably on the order of 10 to 12 weeks.
Nobody knows - someone makes an assumption - this will be repeated and than it becomes "news"
Why does not Sylvie digg up the interview or is there no written copy?

Why is it surprising? The new finfet technology is such a radical departure from previous tick-tock shrinks that some hiccup is to be expected.
The very original timelines had Ivy Bridge introductions in Q4 11/Q1 12 timeframe, so that would amount to a glitch. Even the mighty Intel is not immune to the challenges of very deep submicron manufacturing. Note this is not a few working die to characterize for publications - this is shipping in volume with the yields that the business is based on - a big difference.